When the best player OKlahoma State's Travis Ford will ever recruit was beyond the opposite baseline, beyond the boundary of the basketball floor, beyond the limits of the Big 12 Conference conduct and sportsmanship policy, well, the coach in charge was focused on trying to win a basketball game.

As we endeavor to understand how All-American sophomore guard Marcus Smart came to spend the last 24 hours as a talking point instead of a point guard, this is not a bad place to start. At a moment when Ford ought to have had the safety and well-being of his most important player foremost in his mind, Ford was focused on how to rescue the lost cause of defeating the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

Ford said this himself Sunday evening, as he discussed the Big 12’s decision to suspend Smart for the next three games for his altercation with a spectator near the conclusion of Tech’s victory late Saturday. Whether or not Ford witnessed Smart shoving one Jeff Orr, he’d have to have been blindfolded not to see a technical foul called — and Smart needing to be walk-shoved back to the OSU bench by a teammate. Though Ford removed Smart from the game, he did not ask that he be escorted to the locker room out of concern for an additional altercation that might result from a court storm.

He did not have this concern, he said, until the fans were on the floor. “I didn’t think much about it,” Ford said, “because I was still trying to figure out a way to win the game.”

Ford talked an awful lot about the need for Smart to learn from his actions at Texas Tech, but it’s rather a shame Smart had to go this far and have such a dramatic education shoved down his throat. If there are lessons to be learned, they ought to have been taught by his coaches, by Ford. But it appears Ford was too distracted with trying to win games.

What happened in the Tech game was the culmination of a pattern of Smart's growing frustration over the Cowboys’ recent struggles on the court, traced to the injury to senior center Michael Cobbins that damaged the Cowboys' balance and team defense. Smart both was playing and behaving on and around the court with an increased sense of desperation that was not in line with the persona he’d established for himself in his time as a college basketball player and prospect.

Smart was beloved — and described the ultimate leader and winner — by his coaches with the U.S. junior national team, from Florida’s Billy Donovan to Gonzaga’s Mark Few and on down the line. Ford said he knows what Smart stands for as a person. “Marcus is a young man who has been in the public eye for quite a bit,” Ford said in Sunday’s press conference. “I think we would all agree for the highest percentage of the time, he has conducted himself as a tremendous young man.”

Indeed, we probably would. But for the percentage of the time that contains the past three weeks, Smart has been out of character. His flopping was the first small alarm, but then came the kicked chair against West Virginia and the playing style that became more ragged and outlandish. Which is not to say it was predictable that Smart would go literally over the line separating the athletes from the spectators. It is to say that if lessons were to be taught, they could have occurred sooner and with demonstrably less drama.

It’s never much fun to look back at the “Crosstown Punchout” that developed between Xavier and Cincinnati near the end of their rivalry game in the 2011-12 season. But we can compare how Ford sat at the press conference podium after the Texas Tech game and declared that he did not know what occurred to Bearcats coach Mick Cronin’s direct, authoritative approach immediately after several of his players were involved in a benches-clearing brawl.

Cronin told he media he’d ordered the players to remove their uniforms and said they would not be returned “until they have a full understanding of where they go to school and what the university stands for and how lucky they are to even be there, let alone have a scholarship." He said he would gather with the school’s president and athletic director to determine who would be permitted to remain on the team. Look at what Cincinnati has become as a program since.

There was no hiding behind “I don’t know” until someone higher up was forced to impose the discipline — discipline that in Smart’s case became more severe, more embarrassing and more consequential for both Smart and the Cowboys as a team.

Ford referred several times to the notion Smart had made “a mistake.” For once in the case of an athlete being disciplined, the noun was a fit. Those athletes caught with marijuana or busted for DUI or driving someone else’s rented vehicle have only made the mistake of getting caught; they fully intended to trying to get away with those particular transgressions.

In Smart’s case, his intention was to get off the floor near the end zone stands, walk back to the court and complete the business of absorbing another frustrating loss. Instead when he heard an insult from an audience member — Orr said he called Smart “a piece of crap” and did not use any racial slur — Smart lost his temper and reacted as he did. That, folks, is a mistake.

For that, he will miss three important Big 12 games that might cost him a chance to end his college career in the NCAA Tournament. He will continue to be recycled through the highlight shows, and his altercation will be revived when he returns Feb. 22 for a second game against Texas Tech.

“It does not make last night's wrong a right, but when you're around somebody every day like I am, you know that he is a 'no, sir' and a 'yes, sir' type of guy who will do whatever you ask him to do and tries to uplift his teammates whenever he can, even when he's going through difficult situations,” Ford said. “He's done a lot of good. I get a little disappointed that some of that will get lost in all of this, but I told him that he can get that back by how he conducts himself, learning from this and moving forward.”

Smart is a fine young man. He made a mistake. He is being appropriately punished. The shame of it is, all this might have been avoided. It can be hard to learn when your teacher isn’t doing an effective job.